GNU Emacs is the most popular and widespread of the Emacs family of editors. It is also the most powerful and flexible. Unlike all other text editors, GNU Emacs is a complete working environment—you can stay within Emacs all day without leaving.

, 3rd Edition tells readers how to get started with the GNU Emacs editor. It is a thorough guide that will also "grow" with you: as you become more proficient, this book will help you learn how to use Emacs more effectively. It takes you from basic Emacs usage (simple text editing) to moderately complicated customization and programming.The third edition of

describes Emacs 21.3 from the ground up, including new user interface features such as an icon-based toolbar and an interactive interface to Emacs customization. A new chapter details how to install and run Emacs on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux, including tips for using Emacs effectively on those platforms.

, third edition, covers:

Learning GNU Emacs

Learning GNU Emacs

Learning GNU Emacs

• How to edit files with Emacs

• Using the operating system shell through Emacs

• How to use multiple buffers, windows, and frames

• Customizing Emacs interactively and through startup files

• Writing macros to circumvent repetitious tasks

• Emacs as a programming environment for Java, C++, and Perl, among others

• Using Emacs as an integrated development environment (IDE)

• Integrating Emacs with CVS, Subversion and other change control systems for projects with multiple developers

• Writing HTML, XHTML, and XML with Emacs

• The basics of Emacs Lisp

The book is aimed at new Emacs users, whether or not they are programmers. Also useful for readers switching from other Emacs implementations to GNU Emacs.

5.4 Reading Manpages in Emacs

5.4 Reading Manpages in Emacs

You can read Unix online documentation (called manpages) from within Emacs by typing M-x man or by selecting Man from the Help menu.[30] This command creates a buffer with a formatted manpage in it, which you can scroll through (or copy from) using Emacs commands. Simply type: M-x man EnterUnix-command-nameEnter.

For the Unix command name, you can use either a simple name, like ls, or a manpage section name like ttytab(5).

The advantage of using the man command is that you can scroll through the manpage easier than you can in some terminal applications or shell windows. Also, if you try to view manpages in shell mode, they may come out garbled if the settings aren't right, whereas man gives you clean text.